View from the Green Room: Take a bow Mr Scanlon!
Stephen Mackey, Metropolitan Mayor Joe Kelly, Pamela Harrison and composer Dr Greg Scanlon.
SETU’s multiple musical courses combine at the end of each year to produce a top-class concert that celebrates the music school that began way back in the seventies in the old WRTC.
Individual instrument tuition that lead to grade achievement, music theory, choirs, orchestras and performance all play out over the course of the academic year and it’s a delight to sit in on these talented performers on a fine summer’s evening at St. Patrick’s Gateway Centre.
A feature of the evening is that the MC’s role is shared with the performers of the various orchestras, who each get to introduce their pieces.
The SETU Traditional Orchestra kicks off with a ballyhoo of an opening set.
Carolan’s Captain Sudley opens with a gentle march over a tuneful counter melody. When the flutes hit the melody, the composition just flies. That’s the beauty of Carolan - he always keeps something in reserve.
A North Star jig is flighty and lively with a lilt to the piece that’s full of joy that reminds me of Keats’ famous line on that bright star: “Would I were as constant as thou art”.
The Ashplant and John Stenson’s Reel has a piano introduction that reminds me of my old friend Mícheál Ó Súilleabháin’s work and segues into a real footapper of an ending.
The SETU Guitar Ensemble cuts a fine swathe with a scoobedoo if ever there was one on Duke Ellington’s iconic Caravan and a funky Tico-Tico no Fubo.
The Irish Washerwomen jig is a big favourite with the full house but the Piazzolla Libertango is my favourite.
Kayla Kissane’s pure soprano brushes the walls of the Gateway with an innocence and affection in her lullaby Seoithín Seothó – a traditional warning to faery folk to leave her child alone.
SETU main orchestra has a big treat in store for us tonight with The Gentle County, an original composition from Dr Greg Scanlon, who introduces the piece with some fascinating insights into what moves a composer’s quill.
This time it’s an homage to the Déise – the county known as the Gentle County.
Greg’s work is a tone poem, really – a single-movement orchestral piece that evokes a mood inspired by his experiences of the county.
There’s a gentleness about the opening that brings feelings of home and dúchas or heritage with soft contours of county featuring on violas.
There’s drama here too in a central section with good work from the cellos that speaks of stormy Dunmore seas or rumbling Comeraghs, maybe, before a soft, delicate progress to see us out the gap with no less than three intriguing codas.
A Brahms Hungarian dance shakes the audience out of its composure with lots of thumps on timps, rapid short and sweeping melodies with abrupt starts that inspire threats of Cossacks leppin’ over tables and gypsy wenches in knife fights.
When MD Stephen Mackey involves the house in rhythmic claps, sure the whole place goes mad.
Nora Byrne Kavanagh’s Waterford Harbour massed finale is just the ticket for an end to a smashing concert.
Well done SETU Music School on its huge contribution to the arts in the Déise.
